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No, they don't need to be in place in high school. Let the kids play, for crying out loud. I'd rather the kids be aggressive and swing at pitches and get some enjoyment from the game, rather than have them sit there taking pitches as if this were some never-ending tryout for the scouts. Baseball is too slow for many kids' tastes; we don't need to make the game less appealing to them at that age.

I think these young players can wait until college, at least, before they start to get Sabermetrics drummed into them.

Also, some high schools play at a level where they put a guy on the mound for his ability to get the ball over the plate. Letting that guy have a free strike is foolish. If I (A no-power guy) get to 2-0, yes, I understand giving me the take sign....but I hated being 0-1 to begin the AB.

I would say that no I wouldn't go out and stress sabermetrics that much. At HS, the game is much difference than in the major leagues, so things like putting the ball in play just to put it in play make a whole lot more sense. ROE's are 1.5% of the plays on BIPs. In HS it has got to be 5-10% where I played and we turned maybe three DPs all year. I suspect the umps expand the zone a great deal. I played in a small town Iowa conference that I don't think has had a kid drafted ever. Focusing on fundamentals at that level is going to pay off WAY more than worrying about sabermetrics.

I loved playing baseball in high school. My junior year I never swung at a first pitch (Boggs was my hero), but my senior year I had the approach of I'm swinging if it is in a tight zone of my favorite area with no strikes, larger with one strike and then the whole zone with two strikes. I hit about 80 points higher my senior year with pretty good doubles power. #humblebrag

1. Is the goal winning, developing or giving the kids something they enjoy? It's not clear the non-BA parts of OBP (esp if it doesn't include ROE) will contribute that much to winning at the HS level anyway, but I also suspect that working counts is not the best way to develop a batter. We even see this in the minors where guys who walk but don't hit don't generally make a lot of progress. If you can't hit 300 in the minors, there's a very good chance you'll never hit well enough to last in the majors. Of course approximately 8.99999 of every 9 guys starting in high school ball have no chance of making the majors so I guess they might as well try to work walks.

2. The coach has it right -- if you get a good pitch to hit, try to hit it. I don't know of anybody in sabermetrics that disagrees with that. It's true that Votto (great hitter) only swings at about 11-12% of his first pitches but he absolutely murders the ones he does to the tune of 434/730 with a 390 BABIP. (Interestingly, his other first pitches are pretty much 50/50 balls/strikes. He hits nearly as well after 1-0 as on the first pitches; his OPS is about 250 points lower after 0-1. Votto's eye can't be questioned but to the extent he's letting good hittable strikes go by on the first pitch, it probably is a mistake.)

3. That said, I think it's probably never too early to teach a kid to swing only at the strikes he can murder ... at least until two strikes. Of course, if the kid's really good, that may be damn near anything. Shawon Dunston, as free a swinger as MLB ever saw, hit something like 790 in his senior year.

Plus you have to have huge swings in parks, defense, and especially opposing pitchers. I doubt that you ever have much of an idea what run environment you're going to be playing in from game to game. Basically, the author's point about the metrics being applicable to MLB is correct, and shouldn't be swept under the generic "baseball is baseball" mantra. All the analysis is on MLB (or MiLB) and it's just too far away to be able to directly apply it. By the time you try to figure out which metrics to apply and deal with regression, you're probably much better off teaching fundamentals and letting the kids swing away.

you can use it as a coach, but not push it on your players. you know, put in ten percent effort. for example, don't ask them to bunt or steal. then again, high schoolers are usually not good at catching runners so that might be out the window. they probably suck at bunting too so that will just be reinforced.

also, if you are the math teacher you can have baseball-related problems, and maybe the kids will decide on their own if a sabermetrically-dictated approach is valid or not.

you could at least convince them not to swing at an 0-2 offspeed pitch and at least say walks are important, without aggressively making them change their approach by taking the first pitch every time, etc. of course you'd need to teach them how to pick up pitches which many of them can't.

ROE's are 1.5% of the plays on BIPs. In HS it has got to be 5-10% where I played and we turned maybe three DPs all year.

I doubt it's that high at HS varsity, I get 5.5% for an 80 game sample at 13/14 (so pre-HS), though that GIDP rate is probably in the ballpark (varsity season is 26 games plus post-season here). As much as the higher ROE rate would seem to encourage putting the ball in play, the number of guys with actual power is fairly small and pitcher control is substantially worse in general, as is base-running defense, so not making outs at the plate is still important enough to warrant working the count, IMO.

The run environment is generally substantially higher, though it will fluctuate a lot based on opponents and pitching matchup, though you do generally know in which games runs will be harder to come by. The sac bunt is massively overused as well, IME, even though defenses are poor and fast guys who can't hit are fairly common which would make bunting for a hit a much better bet generally.

Honestly, the difference between a HS varsity game (in a largish school/district, anyway) and a pro game isn't all that vast, it's just that the variance in individual ability is much larger, with the resulting variance in outcomes.

Also, since errors are supposed to be based on ordinary effort by an average fielder in the players league, ROE rates shouldn't really vary much from league to league, allowing for differences in BIP rates. Score-keeping consistency is another matter, though.

Also, since errors are supposed to be based on ordinary effort by an average fielder in the players league, ROE rates shouldn't really vary much from league to league, allowing for differences in BIP rates.

But errors aren't a byproduct of effort, but competency. Error rates should be significantly higher the lower you get.

Stands to reason, then, that swinging at the first pitch is rarely a good idea.

It's not that swinging at the first pitch is rarely a good idea, it's that a hitter should be looking for "his" pitch on that first pitch. What I tell my little leaguers is that the first pitch should be like the count is 2-0 or 3-1. Pick a spot that you want it and rip at it if it's there.

But errors aren't a byproduct of effort, but competency. Error rates should be significantly higher the lower you get.

From OBR rule 2.00 ORDINARY EFFORT is the effort that a fielder of average skill at a position in that league or classification of leagues should exhibit on a play, with due consideration given to the condition of the field and weather conditions.

10.12 covers errors in some detail, but basically for a play to result in an error, a fielder using ordinary effort should have been able to get an out. I suppose that leaves "average" up for debate, but at lower levels the average fielder will be less competent, which should result in plays that might be errors at the MLB level not to be at the HS level. At the extreme end, in say a 6-year old t-ball league where any out is extraordinarily rare, any misplay by almost anyone isn't actually an error under this rule.

As far as I know, NFHS (FED) scoring rules don't make this explicit, but given the multitude of references to ordinary effort elsewhere in those rules, my understanding is that the same standard is applied. Also, at least around here, FED rules apply to pretty much every sub-HS league, with additional league rules (mainly on equipment and field size) layered on top of that.

From OBR rule 2.00 ORDINARY EFFORT is the effort that a fielder of average skill at a position in that league or classification of leagues should exhibit on a play, with due consideration given to the condition of the field and weather conditions.

That's fine for difficult plays, but meaningless if players are flubbing routine plays, which they often do at the high school level. Clearly an infielder overthrowing 1B on an easy ground ball is an error in the majors, where it happens once in (WAG) 300 such plays, but what if the level of fielding is such that it happens once a game? Do you decide that each fielder gets a gimme error because the level of fielding in the league is so low? Do you flip a coin on each such play and only assign the error if it comes up heads?

From OBR rule 2.00 ORDINARY EFFORT is the effort that a fielder of average skill at a position in that league or classification of leagues should exhibit on a play, with due consideration given to the condition of the field and weather conditions.

Yeah, I know that godforsaken "ordinary effort" clause, the worst two words in the whole rulebook. But it's at most a minor consideration here. For starters, I see that mostly on the range side, not the ability to cleanly field and throw.* I'm more than willing to raise the bar a little higher at the big league level when it comes to tough hops or plays where more ground is covered, but that doesn't describe the vast majority of errors in the sport.

Ballplayers are expected to field balls at or near them. And make accurate throws after that. If they can't, it's an error. An errant throw to first from the third baseman after a routine grounder is an error at any level above Little League, but it's a hell of a lot more likely to happen at the high school level than at Camden Yards.

Error rates should be, and are, more common at the high school level.

* And it's really not workable any other way. The average skill level at second in high school might mean only 80 percent of balls hit right at a guy result in a putout vs. 98 percent in the big leagues, but you can't give errors on only 4/5ths of said plays. It's all or nothing. Yes, you can be a little more forgiving on the types of plays that a HS second baseman might not be expected to make that a big leaguer could, but those are a small portion of the error total.

I think these young players can wait until college, at least, before they start to get Sabermetrics drummed into them.

Why are you phrasing it like that? Try to take I guess at what percentage of the time young players are fed sabermetric advice. The overbearing influence on young players is from the scouting side.

“I believe if you see a pitch you want, go hit it. Taking pitches sometimes lets pitchers and umpires dictate the at-bat.”

This is true, but that's ultimately factored into the outcome of the at bat which affects OBP. Now as far as I'm aware there haven't been any studies suggest batters try to take more pitches or rare swing at strikes, so I'm not even sure why that's being posed as sabemetric advice (besides the moneyball stereotype). There's nothing inherent to sabermetrics about walking a lot. Each player has his own break even point on what percentage of pitches he should swing at.

#8 touched on a very important point. There probably isn't a philosophy that applies to "high school hitters" because that group covers everything from very advanced club-team kids with fairly mature approaches and good swings to kids that played rec ball, and sometimes not much of that, and at times literally decide whether to swing before the pitch is thrown.

And then, on top of that - If you've got one of the advanced kids, what does he have following him? If he's on a strong team with mostly kids like himself, go ahead and be selective and have your 350/550/500 slash line. With a few of those, runs pile up quickly. If he's the star of a lousy team, you want him to expand his zone because your best chance to win a game is for him to drive in most of your runs so you give up some walks.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are guys that have some pop, and will get you an occasional extra base hit, but also K 40% of the time - if that makes him one of your best 9, it would probably be counterproductive to try to "fix" him. Alternately, there are guys who can't hit .200 but have OBP's in the .350 range simply because most teams don't have enough pitching - you certainly don't want him swinging early in the count.

Sabermetrics or not, it's pretty simple: when batting, don't make outs. When fielding, make outs.

If you're always taking the first pitch, you're missing some good pitches to hit. Don't do that. If you're always swinging on the first pitch, you're swinging at some bad pitches. Don't do that. Swing at strikes. Don't swing if it's not a strike.

If you're always taking the first pitch, you're driving up pitch counts. But it's not like HS teams have a MLB rotation: one day's starter can and will be another day's reliever, and vice-versa. Just because you're getting their starter out of the game by tiring him doesn't mean you're getting a significantly worse pitcher. Burning through their bullpen in one game doesn't help you for the next game, because you don't play a series of games against the same opponent. The secondary benefit of taking pitches doesn't work at the HS level.

I wonder if Parkhouse played HS ball. It's a different game, in my opinion. And it shouldn't be as cutthroat as it is at the professional level. A more reasonable approach for HS kids is to try to work an AB until they get a pitch they can handle and put back through the box. Anyone who can master that approach will, by default, be a pretty selective hitter and likely be able to refine his approach as he ascends through the levels.

I liked playing to win in HS. But I also liked fielding chances, whether in RF or at 3B. The last thing we need in HS is a game of catch to generate excitement among players. I didn't like it when teammates (or I) struck out on horrible pitches, but I did appreciate aggressive teammates.

For the record, I saw many, many curveballs in HS. Most were lame; some were pretty decent. Maybe I'm younger (30), but it seemed to me that most kids were desperate to show off their "breaking" stuff. My younger brother was the most successful pitcher in the league when he played, but he only threw fastballs and changeups...which was apparently remarkable enough that the other parents couldn't believe he was dominating their kids.

Looking back on my HS career, I think I might have been too patient. I had really good eye at the plate, a nice level swing, but with limited power. I probably let too many solid pitches go by, because it was too easy to work the pitcher to go deep in the count. So I would walk a lot, and I could still put a decent swing on any strike I had too. My coach didn't really care for my eye/patience in the box, saying I let too many hittable pitches go by. To me unless the 0-0 or 2-0 pitch was PERFECT, I didn't want it because I knew I had an advantage against most pitchers. I roped a lot of 2b, but only a few HR, so maybe if I had more power I would have tried to jump on more strikes. I just never really found out how to drive the ball deep without popping up. I think I hit the fence on a line more times than HR hit.

I still think, at least in my small-ish area where I grew up, that swinging early and often was just giving less talented pitchers more of an advantage than they deserved.

My younger brother was the most successful pitcher in the league when he played, but he only threw fastballs and changeups...which was apparently remarkable enough that the other parents couldn't believe he was dominating their kids.

The best hitters, in HS on down, thrive on timing. At the HS level the best hitters can recognize fastball vs. breaking ball AND react to it, because they know how to time a fastball, and they know how to time a breaking ball. But if they can't pick up the difference in velocity of a changeup, a pitcher can easily exploit it. The hitter won't be able to adjust.